Partner Article

Leeds lawyer launches ‘Legatus’

A successful Leeds-based lawyer has launched a new venture especially to help SMEs.

Having run her own business for the last four years supporting SMEs in collecting debt, tightening their trading terms and working to protect their assets, Rashmi Dubé has launched Legatus Law after discovering a gap in the regional market.

The new firm will focus on services related to commercial law for SMEs, such as establishing contracts, employer, supplier and shareholder agreements and restructuring. Rashmi also has specialist experience in construction law having worked with developers and sub contractors on projects such as Primark, Sainsbury’s and Manchester Justice Courts.

Legatus will incorporate Rashmi’s current business, Liquid Recovery, and will showcase her experience in the industry, spanning almost 20 years working as a lawyer and mediator.

Despite a shrinking legal sector in Leeds, Rashmi- who won Forward Ladies Entrepreneur of the Year in 2011- decided the time was right to launch her new business.

Rashmi said: “The reason I have established this practice, and the reason I’m confident it will work, is that this business has been born out of a real need in the city. Having set up my previous business from my back bedroom after working for 16 years in large corporate firms, I have first hand experience of how different the challenges are for SMEs and I have seen the legal sector from a client perspective.

“Working with a range of clients on debt recovery I had the opportunity to see how this is often related to larger problems - lack of water-tight contracts, problems with terms and conditions, issues with contractor conflict - all these things eventually lead to bad debt. The problem is that many of the small/medium businesses in these situations would never turn to the larger law firms in the city as they’d feel intimidated -many feel their issues are insignificant.”

Rashmi previously worked as a solicitor at Irwin Mitchell and Metis Law in Leeds and is already well known in the financial sector in the city.

Etta Cohen, founder of Forward Ladies, said: “Whilst there are many women who work in law these days, there are few who sit at the top of the firm’s corporate structure. I’m excited to see Rashmi expanding her business and hope it will inspire other women to push forward in this sector”.

In the coming weeks Legatus Law will be running a number of introductory breakfast seminars to offer advice and guidance. The first of these will be on September 25th at Legatus Law offices on St Paul’s Street in Leeds city centre.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Anna Addison .